Sunday, April 18, 2010

A Murder of Crows-P.F. Chisholm

In 1592 Deputy Warden of the English West Marsh Sir Robert Carey is in London with his top assistant Sergeant Dodd. Still irate by the treatment he received from Vice Chamberlain Thomas Heneage, Dodd hires attorney Mr. Enys to sue. However, his superiors impede the proceedings in spite of the fact that he has a strong case.

When a rotted corpse is found by Her Highness Steps at the Thames, Carey’s father Lord Hunsdon, whose mother is the Boleyn girl who failed to marry Henry though he sired him, asks his son to remain in London to investigate. Although he needs to be back in Plymouth for raiding season, Carey and Dodd make inquiries in a dangerous London; where those who do not want to kill you with a blade try to skewer you with words. They soon begin to connect dots between the badly decomposed corpse, a punished priest and Cornish land sale scam at the same time Sir Robert’s mom is in Cornwall, reason unknown.

The latest Robert Carey Elizabethan mystery is a great entry in a strong historical series (see A Famine of Horses and A Plague of Angels) that uses a real person as the prime character. Fast-paced throughout, readers obtain a taste (or distaste if you ask Dodd) of London while meeting Shakespeare and Marlowe as Carey (a fascinating person in real life too) and Dodd investigate the corpse. P.F. Chisholm has written another entertaining whodunit as her Carey tales are some of the best on the market.